Pardon the irony of reading a more-than-800-word article about finding better story formats than 800-word articles.
You see, while this might be a somewhat effective way for us to communicate with you, lovely Nieman Lab readers, it isn’t the most effective for the breadth of the BBC’s audience. Though journalists might be trained to write in chunks like this, some readers — especially young’ins — need information that comes in a more deliberate format.
As Tristan Ferne, the lead producer for the BBC’s research and development unit, put it in a recent 2,043-word post, “Could we combine existing media to make online news more accessible, engaging and relevant to young people?” (This was just one phase of the team’s year-long quest to test new formats for storytelling; other stages involved ways to help readers comprehend news better, and new methods of personalizing information.)
In 2015, we launched the DNI Fund, a €150 million commitment open to publishers of all sizes in Europe to support high-quality journalism through technology and innovation. After four successful rounds, and a myriad of transformative projects across Europe such as La Numérique in France or REMP in Slovakia, I’m delighted to announce the recipients of the fifth round of funding. This time, we’re offering €21.2 million to support 98 projects in 28 European countries. This brings the total funding support so far to €115.2 million.
Imagine that you came back home after a busy day of work and wanted to catch up on the news about the Trump/Putin summit. This is, in fact, exactly what I did Monday.
“Each new election is a test.” The Washington Post’s Elizabeth Dwoskin took a peek at Facebook’s fact-checking efforts ahead of the Mexican election. (Another big problem in Mexico around the election: Fake news on WhatsApp.)
In this case, the most problematic posts are not coming from outside the country but from within it. “The hardest part is where to draw the line between a legitimate political campaign and domestic information operations,” Facebook security executive Guy Rosen said. “It’s a balance we need to figure out how to strike.”